This week, I’m once again incredibly proud to have Pixelmator as our Mac.AppStorm sponsor. One of my all-time favourite apps, this is a fantastic alternative to the increasingly-bloated Photoshop for all manner of graphic editing work.

Labelled as an “image editor for the rest of us”, Pixelmator’s interface is enjoyable to use while maintaining a simple learning curve for new adopters. If you’re already a seasoned Photoshop pro, you’ll feel right at home with the familiar palette interface and similar tools.

Pixelmator is based on Core Image technology that uses your Mac’s video card for image processing. This means that it’s fast. It supports a huge range of graphics formats, and the price of $59 is a welcome change to the inflated charge for many competing apps.

Although I still use Photoshop from time to time, Pixelmator has become by go-to tool for 80% of tasks that require working with graphics. If you yearn for a faster, sleeker alternative to Photoshop, give Pixelmator a try today.

There are a number of mammoth picture editors that can do just about anything with an image. Then there are a few very effective smaller-scale apps that have a lot of power while remaining simpler to use – a personal favourite is Acorn. But if you’re someone with only needs to work with images now and then – a blogger looking for attractive embellishments for your texts, or someone maintaining a personal website – even Acorn might seem complicated.

That’s where Acqualia software’s Picturesque comes in: it’s super-simple to use, and delivers excellent results without requiring much knowledge about design, or prior experience of working with graphics.

Photoshop is the undisputed king of image editing, but it also has a huge price tag and an even bigger learning curve. If you don’t make a living as a designer, the time and money necessary for professional photo editing software is hard to justify. Further, some free options like GIMP are much more than many users will ever need.

So what should a Mac owner use for casual graphics editing? One option is Seashore, a free image editor that’s easy and fun to use. Below I’ll walk you through the basic functionality and tell you what I thought of the application.

Have you ever needed to do some simple photo editing or creation, but didn’t want the hassle of opening up Photoshop, or are too afraid to learn it? Then Acorn is for you! It’s a lightweight image editor that allows you to do many of the functions of more advanced programs (such as Photoshop), but doesn’t have quite the same learning curve or price.

Developed by Flying Meat, Acorn is an image editor that allows you do paint, draw and crop photos. It is also jam-packed with other features and a range of useful filters.

We reviewed an earlier version of Acorn last year, but will be covering new features and exploring the basics in greater depth today.

For almost two decades now, Adobe’s Photoshop has ruled as the ultimate image editing tool on the Mac and PC. It offers a comprehensive toolset that is difficult to challenge, and doing so would be a major undertaking for any company. However, over the years, Photoshop has become increasingly bloated with unnecessary features. So why pay $600 for something, when you can find cheaper (and in some cases, better) alternatives?

Acorn from Flying Meat Software is one such Photoshop alternative that encompasses simplicity and power in a very intuitive user interface. It can handle most of your image editing work, right from the simple tasks to those involving some levels of complexity.

We’ve recently looked at a few screenshot tools, along with a range of screen recording applications. A recent addition to this area of software which caught my eye is Layers, a screenshot utility which records all your screen content in a layered Photoshop file.

Layers is actually quite an advanced application, with a whole bunch of different preferences and options for changing what is recorded and how the file is produced. This review will take a look at what’s on offer, and investigate how useful this functionality actually is.

I feel it’s safe to say that most of us are accustomed to using an application such as Photoshop for image editing. I’ve been using it for years, but have recently started to find that – for tasks such as editing images for the web – it’s far too feature packed and resource consuming for my needs.

I was intruiged to hear about Pixelmator, an OS X only image editing tool designed with speed, simplicity and a great user interface in mind. It lacks the raw power of Photoshop, but provides a great, flexible tool for graphics editing and photo manipulation. It’s a fairly recently launched app, but has already undergone several updates, adding widely requested functionality.

This review will take a look at the features offered by Pixelmator and let you know whether I think it’s a tool worthy of being branded a Photoshop competitor.